Holly K. Oxhandler, PhD, LMSW, Associate Dean for Research; Assistant Professor, Baylor University, Diana R. Garland School of Social Work​Emerging research surrounding the integration of mental health clients’ religion/spirituality (RS) in treatment is beginning to identify practitioner characteristics that may influence such integration. Namely, the role of helping professionals’ RS has emerged across disciplines as a critical component of whether and the degree to which clients’ RS is considered in treatment.

This presentation will discuss the recently published Namaste Theory (Oxhandler, 2017), which is a quantitative grounded theory used to help describe the role of mental health care providers’ RS in clinical practice. The author used Glaser’s (2008) formal quantitative grounded theory approach to help conceptually develop a theory based on an emerging theme she identified in her national sample of clinical social workers. Specifically, practitioners’ intrinsic religiosity was significantly related to their attitudes, self-efficacy, perceived feasibility, behaviors, and overall orientation toward integrating clients’ RS in practice (Oxhandler & Parrish, 2016), and the primary predictor of their overall orientation (β=0.44, p<0.001) (Oxhandler et al., 2015). When asked what helps to assess or integrate clients’ RS, 44% of this sample described their personal RS, including their RS belief system, RS curiosity, and RS journey (Oxhandler & Giardina, 2017). Upon recognizing this pattern regarding clinical social workers’ intrinsic religiosity and their integration of clients’ RS, the author began exploring related helping professions’ literature. This pattern was consistent in similar studies across professions, with practitioners’ personal RS, the frequency of RS practices or service attendance, and whether the practitioner had an RS affiliation being related to their consideration of clients’ RS.

One word to help organize and make sense of this pattern was the term Namaste, which is a combination of Namah (to bow/bend) and te (to you) – two Sanskrit words that communicate “I recognize God in you” (Nambiar, 1979, p.7). Other translations of Namaste include “the sacred in me honors the sacred in you” (Oxhandler, 2017, p.5) “the God in me greets the God in you” (Cessna, 2011, p. 43) or “to honor the spirit within” (Duffin 2012, p.14).

Recognizing the role practitioners’ RS has on the degree to which they consider clients’ RS, Namaste served as term to help explain this phenomenon. Further, as described in the article, “as practitioners experience, are engaged in, become aware of, and infuse their own RS beliefs and practices into their daily lives—deepening their [intrinsic religiosity] and becoming more attune to the sacred within—they tend to hold more positive views and engage in clients’ RS beliefs and practices as well. In other words, as helping professionals recognize the sacred within themselves, they appear to be more open to recognizing the sacred within their client.” (Oxhandler, 2017, p.6).

Finally, this presentation will also discuss the potential for Namaste Theory to extend to other elements of diversity, the need for helping professionals’ training programs to recognize the role of practitioners’ RS in ethically integrating clients’ RS (while setting appropriate boundaries around their own RS beliefs), as well as implications for transdisciplinary practice and education.